'''GDRI''' (Game Developer Research Institute) is a website dedicated to researching the companies and people involved with video game development, especially the hidden world of contract development. To find out more about who we are and what we do, read [[About|our about page]]. Otherwise, please click one of the links on the menu to the left, or read our blog below. <small>(For increased enjoyment, go to a [[Special:Random|random page]].)</small>

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'''GDRI (Game Developer Research Institute)''' is a website dedicated to researching the companies and people involved with video game development, especially the hidden world of contract development. To find out more about who we are and what we do, read [[About|our about page]]. Otherwise, please click one of the links on the menu to the left, or read our blog below. <small>(For increased enjoyment, go to a [[Special:Random|random page]].)</small>

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==[[Blog:Sounders: Natsume (Where Are They Now)|Sounders: Natsume (Where Are They Now)]]==

Latest revision as of 19:25, 27 May 2019

GDRI (Game Developer Research Institute) is a website dedicated to researching the companies and people involved with video game development, especially the hidden world of contract development. To find out more about who we are and what we do, read our about page. Otherwise, please click one of the links on the menu to the left, or read our blog below. (For increased enjoyment, go to a random page.)

Back in 2010, I interviewed programmer Scott Marshall, who worked on Ghoul School, R.C. Grand Prix, and Genesis Frogger, among other games. He also adapted the Game Boy version of Monopoly (originally developed by Sculptured Software) to the Game Boy Color. I posted his comments on Frogger years ago, but not Monopoly. Here's what he had to say about the "colorization" process:

I also found a bug in the original code and fixed it (don't remember what exactly).

We also added some animation screens that were not in the original game, just to give a little extra value.

Monopoly was one of several monochrome Game Boy games re-released for the Game Boy Color by Majesco. (See our Morning Star Multimedia entry for more adaptations.) This Cutting Room Floor article compares the different versions of Game Boy Monopoly including another Game Boy Color update that came out in Japan months before the US release. (I did not ask Marshall if he had anything to do with that.)

It's the 30th anniversary of the quintessential TurboGrafx-16 game. No, not PC Engine. I said "TurboGrafx-16," because this is a clear example of NEC having no idea what they were doing in the US. Who knows what games they turned down to bring this over.

Deep Blue is the tale of a "Fish Attack Sub" taking on evil aliens and the aquatic life that have been mutated in their wake. It's like Darius, but less fun.

As soon as you turn the game on, you're immediately struck by the ostentatious presentation. Large, detailed graphics are accompanied by music worthy of any undersea epic. The screenshots on the back of the box look great, which is certainly the main reason Deep Blue crossed the Pacific.

Unfortunately, all that 16-bit, next generation flair is undermined by the game design, which consists almost entirely of shooting at wave after wave of enemy fish moving in repetitive patterns. They don't shoot; they just ram into you. If you're not careful, it's easy to get overwhelmed.

On the plus side, you have a power gauge and can take multiple hits. You also heal automatically over time. If you can get the hang of things, this is a playable game, but it's understandable why most people don't like it. There's worse (D-Force), but there's also so much better.

Deep Blue was released in Japan by Pack-In-Video on March 31, 1989, and came out in the States in 1990. The development history is murky since there are no credits. However, animator Itsuki Imazaki posted sketches and a design proposal on Twitter in 2017. [1][2][3] According to the replies here, he was working at Hi-Score Media Work (Zombie Hunter) at the time. Yasuo Torai did the Japanese package illustration for Deep Blue, the manual cover illustration and logo design for Zombie Hunter, and illustrations for Hi-Score magazine. You can read more about Hi-Score in the Zombie Hunter post.

Someone posted a nice little surprise on Twitter — two lists of Atlus games they received when they interviewed at the company years ago. [4] The first is a list of games developed for other companies going back to 1986, when Atlus was established. Well-worn ground on this site, but it's nice to have official documentation straight from the source. Yes, Atlus toiled away as a contract developer in its early years, making games like Karate Kid for LJN in between bigger projects like Megami Tensei and Xexyz.

Games like Megami Tensei showed that Atlus had more going on than a lot of contractors, which brings us to the second list. These are original titles that were self-published, starting in 1989. And the rest, as they say, is history.

Below is a translation of the lists, followed by some notes and observations: [more...]

In this combat racer from publisher Victor, you assemble a team of cybernetic cyber punks, then drive around a track and earn points by hitting and wrecking your opponents and just not bumping into stuff. Afterwards, you can upgrade your vehicles' parts and weapons. And every character looks like a cyber version of a bonafide celebrity.

If you dig that cyberpunk aesthetic, you might enjoy the presentation of Metal Fangs. But once you get past the title screen and menus, it becomes apparent that the game can't possibly live up to all that. (What could?)

Then there's the fact this was delayed for well over a year. It wasn't released in Japan until December 1993, yet the ROM build date is June 1992. It doesn't seem like that time was used to improve the game.

Further digging hints at what might have caused the long wait — a change of format. JVC, Victor's American counterpart, was planning on bringing Metal Fangs over on CD. It was even on display at Sega's big press event for the launch of Sega CD in October 1992. It was also listed for Sega CD in a Sega newsletter. In the end, it was not released outside of Japan in any form.

The development of Metal Fangs is commonly attributed to Sega or Sega AM2. One reason for that may be the music, which sounds like it was crafted by Sega maestro Hiroshi Kawaguchi né Miyauchi (see also Sword of Vermilion and Rent A Hero). Sound is credited to an "H.M". Programming appears to have been done by a former AM2 programmer and founding member of Genki by the name of Tomoharu Kimura, credited as "T.K". Following that track, the graphic designer is "M.T," who could be Genki founding member/graphic designer Manabu Tamura (Burning Soldier, Robotica).

So might Genki have been the developer? The company was started in late 1990, and the game was supposed to come out in 1992, which would mean development probably started in 1991. However, it was never listed on their website.

One other hypothesis is that Metal Fangs was originally a Sega game that they dropped at some point. Maybe members of Genki took it with them when they left Sega? That would mean development started in at least 1990, but there's no evidence Sega was ever involved.

UPDATE: An unused Yonezawa copyright notice was found in the game's graphics. Yonezawa was a toy company that, under the Party Room 21 label, published games for Famicom, Super Famicom, and Game Boy, but not for any Sega systems. In 1994, it was taken over by Sega.

An update to an earlier post: A former Technosoft staffer has settled the debate on how the Sega CD version of Starblade functions, and there's new information on the 3DO version.

In case you don't know, Starblade is an arcade rail shooter released by Namco in 1991. Unlike their earlier Galaxian³ attraction, Starblade's impressive 3D graphics are done entirely in real-time and do not rely in any way on LaserDiscs. After the initial hoopla died down, it was then some poor developer's turn to make this game run on a home machine that had no business running it.

On the Mega CD/Sega CD, that developer was Technosoft. Yes, the same Technosoft that made the Thunder Force games. Ex-employee Naosuke Arai gave a brief technical explanation in the book Untold History of Japanese Game Developers Volume 3: "The indestructible background elements were indeed streaming off the CD based on the player's coordinates. So it was partially real-time, in a way. Other elements were real-time, but there were no actual polygonal calculations." It doesn't sound like FMV was used as some previously thought.

Arai also said he believed they were working through a middleman, but he didn't say which one. Japanese Internet posts say it was Telenet Japan. Strangely enough, GameFan reported in their very first issue that a number of Mega CD titles were in the planning stages in Japan including Starblade from Wolf Team, which was owned by Telenet Japan. (Golden Axe 3, Thunder Force V, and Shining Force 3 were among the others named.) This might just be a coincidence, however, as they indignantly dismissed these claims in issue 4, claims they made, while bashing other magazines' international coverage.

(I should also note that another former employee tweeted in October 2017 that Starblade was their last game at Technosoft before they left.)

Starblade also made its way to the next generation 3DO. I talked to one of the programmers, Akihito Koriyama, who was a contractor with developer HighTech Lab. Japan. He confirmed that the 3DO port uses FMV for the background imagery and "flying objects" are pre-rendered 2D graphics. During gameplay, those objects are rendered behind the FMV and, after some trickery with transparencies (as illustrated here), can appear to come out from behind elements in the FMV. So despite the fact the 3DO was a more powerful system, there's apparently no 3D used here either.

Koriyama added that "it was a big job" for the graphic designers and programmers. The animations were huge, and files totaled over 100,000 during production. He gave most of the credit to Yuji Shingai, who he described as a "real genius programmer." Shingai, who was also a contractor, was formerly a colleague of Koriyama's at Game Freak and later contributed to games like Intelligent Qube. On Starblade, he was responsible for retrieving all 3D vertex data from the arcade machine using an in-circuit emulator. This took several days, as Koriyama recalled, but the data was then used by the CG team to render the FMV with LightWave 3D using Amigas and Raptor workstations. Most of the original programming was done by Shingai, while Koriyama mainly programmed tools and edited the audio and video.

All that effort paid off because the effect is quite convincing. I've put together a side-by-side comparison video (see below) of the FMV from the first segment of the game and footage captured from 3DO hardware. You have to look very closely, but you can see shootable objects peek out from behind the FMV.

The PlayStation port, called Starblade Alpha, was also developed by HighTech Lab. Japan. This seems to use at least some real-time 3D graphics. (Koriyama helped a little bit with programming, but he is not credited.)

It's not really an Out Run game; it's a Chase HQ knockoff. The only things connecting this to Out Run are your red sportscar (a Larborarri Teratuga) and your ability to pick radio stations. There aren't even branching paths — even Chase HQ had those!

Mr. T lookalike

In Battle Out Run, you're a bounty hunter criss-crossing America, trying to catch mobsters that look like Mr. T (see right). You can play the stages out of order, but the stages get increasingly more difficult, so you're better off just starting from the beginning.

You could buy parts in the NES and SMS versions of Chase H.Q, but it's a much more integral part of Battle Out Run. During each stage, you'll board a truck ala Spy Hunter to upgrade various parts. Unlike Chase H.Q., these upgrades are permanent; they're also necessary to survive the game.

On paper, combining Out Run with Chase H.Q. should have been a slam dunk, but it falls flat in execution. The cars in this game are among the most annoying you'll find anywhere, and they only get more annoying with each stage. They usually either fly right into you or mindlessly weave back and forth. The backgrounds are fine, but apparently America is one big desert. Even Chicago is sandy! They added oil slicks and ramps to spice things up, but...they don't.

It's not listed in their 25th Anniversary Official Character Collection book, but code comparisons and a check of the credits suggest this was programmed (not wholly developed) by Arc System Works. They're a well-known company now, but they spent their early years anonymously providing programming services for Sega. (Incidentally, founder and president Minoru Kidooka used to work for Sega.) Arc must have had a good codebase or game engine (does that term apply to old Master System games?) because they went on to touch almost every internal Sega 8-bit racing game from here on in, including the Super Monaco GP and Sonic Drift series.

The popularity of the Atari 2600 and the success of Activision as the system's first third-party publisher opened the floodgates for other third-parties to saturate the market in the early 1980s. If you're even vaguely familiar with the 2600, you've probably heard of Imagic. Companies like Parker Brothers, Coleco, Mattel, and Sega also made games for the venerable platform. Then there was Data Age, a California firm started by a group of venture capitalists that has largely been forgotten by history.

First impressions are very important, and Data Age made a lousy one with their initial lineup of titles. Sssnake in particular, a banal Centipede clone, is generally considered one of the worst games on the 2600. Data Age got better over time, though: Journey Escape, based around the band Journey, is merely boring, the shooter Bermuda Triangle is good, and Frankenstein's Monster is knocking on the door of greatness.

Frankenstein's Monster is basically a combination of the multi-level platforming of Donkey Kong and the creature dodging and obstacle hopping of Pitfall!. The object is to build a wall around the monster before he's brought to life and goes on a rampage. To do that, you must make your way past ghosts, spiders, and trap doors, down to the dungeon of Dr. Frankenstein's castle.

The dungeon is where you'll find a stone for your wall, but you'll have to cross a pool of acid and moving platforms to get it. Then you must go back to the top of the castle and run through a swarm of vampire bats before leaving the stone at its final destination.

With each round trip, the task becomes more treacherous, all the while the monster grows in power. There is a time limit, so use trap doors to your advantage. You lose points, but you save precious seconds. Succeed and watch the monster fade into oblivion; fail and watch the rampage unfold.

Fun and varied gameplay, a clear goal and ending, a nice game over sequence — Frankenstein's Monster has a lot going for it. It might even be, to use an overused term, a "hidden gem." Unfortunately, neither Franky nor big licenses like Journey were enough to turn the tide. Data Age filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in April 1983. (One article suggests Frankenstein's Monster didn't make it to store shelves as a result.)

At this time, we do not know the names of the people who actually developed Data Age's games. One name that comes up with any connection to development is J. Ray Dettling, a science fiction writer who wrote the backstories. He supposedly also designed the games, or at least some of them, and in one interview says he worked on graphics and sound effects on their last few games including Frankenstein's Monster.

According to Activision Anthology (2600 compilation) producer Ken Love, who was trying to put together an Anthology of games by other third-parties, all the games were done by three Chinese programmers — in the US. Hong Kong records show that a company called Data Age Far East Limited existed during this timeframe, but that could have just been related to manufacturing, if it's related at all.

Shooters, shmups — whatever you want to call them, they were everywhere in the early 1990s, and the Sega Mega Drive/Genesis was a shoot-em-up powerhouse. The Super Famicom/Super NES was not, or at least that's the reputation it had.

Games like D-Force (Dimension Force in Japan) from publisher Asmik (the one with the pink dinosaur as the mascot) didn't help dispel that notion. It's about as generic as it gets on the "Snezz." To make up for that, developer Cream added a heaping helping of Mode 7, as any good early SNES game would.

You see, every other stage is an "exploration" stage during which you can switch between altitudes. Other games like Blade Eagle for the Master System and Vertical Force for the Virtual Boy tried this, but in those only your ship moved. Here, the entire background zooms in and out. It MIGHT have been cool back then, but it's cheesy now.

These so-called exploration stages have other problems. It's sometimes hard to tell what's background decoration and what can hurt you if you fly into it. It's also possible to fly into enemies above you (that you can't see) as you raise your altitude.

When you lose all your choppers, you spin out of control. Well, the background spins and you crash while an annoying whirring noise loops. That gets obnoxious after the 5th or 10th time.

While I only learned of Cream's involvement in the development of this game from someone's resume, it fits in with some of their other games. Not only is it rather sterile, it's a bit clunky as well. The collision detection is off, and enemies — especially bosses and mid-bosses — bounce and zoom around a lot. Sometimes there's just too much going on on-screen, which causes that customary SNES slowdown.

Months earlier, Asmik released a shooter for the Japanese Mega Drive called Verytex, developed by Opera House. One thing it has that D-Force doesn't is some great sound work by Hitoshi Sakimoto, Masaharu Iwata, and Yoshio "JKL" Furukawa.

Verytex is bland in its own right, but it's much more enjoyable than D-Force in every way. I thought maybe the excellent music was clouding my judgment, so I muted it — nope, still better.

Some other differences include a choice of three main weapons you can pick up along the way, instead of just powering up your base weapon. You also have the ability to use bombs, which would have been very helpful in D-Force.

Then there are the similarities. In both games, you have a main weapon and homing missiles. Both games have mid-bosses, and they're both "paint-by-numbers" vertical shooters. That may not sound like much, but the more I compare the two, the more similar they feel on some molecular level, despite different developers.

This might be a stretch, but could those structural similarities be because of a common client? Both games appear to have been done for or through a company called ISCO, which is even mentioned in Verytex's ending credits. D-Force has little in the way of credits, but there is someone from ISCO given special thanks, and we've made several connections between Cream and ISCO. As far as we can tell, this company ISCO usually subcontracted to other companies, but I feel like they may have commissioned these games, rather than the publisher, and then sold them to Asmik, similar to what happened with Wurm for the NES. (See our Shouichi Yoshikawa interview.) However, that's purely speculation on my part.

We're pleased to announce that Tower of Druaga and Dragon Buster had a baby and its name is Zombie Hunter.

In this Famicom title, you control a warrior wearing golden armor, trying to find a key to move on to the next area. Sound familiar? And just like Dragon Buster, it's a side-view, weapon-swinging action game where you periodically stop to battle enemies (which are apparently all zombies). Also, most of the bosses are dragons.

More RPG elements have been added to the mix such as experience points and leveling up. Victorious battles also earn you treasure chests filled with gold, which you can use in shops hidden throughout the game. Chests may also contain items such as armor, food, medicine, new weapons, and the key to the next level. Hopefully the enemies drop enough items because this is a tough game. Grinding is recommended.

Despite the fact most of the game takes place in an underground labyrinth, the levels aren't very mazelike at all. You're given the choice of two paths at the start and that's it. Unlike Dragon Buster, the stages only scroll left and right.

Zombie Hunter's resemblance to those Namco classics isn't much of a surprise, considering it was the brainchild of programmer Fukashi Omorita, a former employee at the venerable game maker. In fact, he worked on the Famicom version of Tower of Druaga and several other conversions. He later programmed Itadaki Street for the Famicom and a Monopoly game for the Super Famicom produced by Shigesato Itoi, then joined Chunsoft, where he was involved with some visual novels and Torneko no Daibouken games.

Other people worked on the game, of course — Omorita mentions on his site a graphic designer named Suda, who died several years later at a young age. The development company Lenar was brought in to do background graphics, music, and the voice synthesis you hear on occasion. Lenar was run by Junichi Mizutari, an acquaintance of Omorita's from Namco.

Zombie Hunter was published by a company called Hi-Score Media Work, which was also responsible for a game magazine. They were sued by Enix after they ran a spoiler article on Dragon Quest II, and that may have been the start of their downfall. They did go on to release an English dictionary for the MSX (which Omorita worked on) as well as Faria, a Famicom RPG from Game Arts and something called Colon. They also appear to be behind the much-maligned PC Engine/TurboGrafx-16 shooter Deep Blue, which was published by Pack-In-Video (which distributed Faria).

An MSX2 version of Zombie Hunter was also released which loses the voice samples and has choppier scrolling. The credits are the same as the Famicom version except for the addition of one programmer. It's unclear if Omorita actually worked on it as he doesn't talk about it on his site.

Activision planned a Stateside NES release called Zombie Master, but that was canceled. If you must play this, seek out the English translation by KingMike.

We now have "official" evidence of certain developers' involvement in certain Sega 8- and 16-bit games. But first, here's some background on the case that produced it:

In October 1993, Atari Corp.1 filed a lawsuit against Sega of America alleging infringement of a 1984 patent involving "horizontal scrolling on a video display."2 The Tramiel family company sought a preliminary injunction that would have halted the manufacture, use, and sale of Genesis and Game Gear hardware and software.

1. Atari Corp., incorporated on May 17, 1984, as Tramel [sic] Technology, Ltd., was started by ousted Commodore founder and president Jack Tramiel to create a new computer. In July of that year, the company bought Atari, Inc.'s consumer assets and was renamed Atari Corp.

The court found that the harm caused to Sega, retailers, developers, and peripheral manufacturers by this injunction would have likely outweighed whatever harm had been done to Atari, so the motion was denied. Nevertheless, a settlement was reached in September 1994 between both parties — Sega would acquire $40 million worth of stock in Atari and would also pay Atari $50 million for a license to use over 70 patents issued between 1977 and 1984. The companies agreed to cross-license up to five games per year through 2001. They also agreed to drop all claims against each other.

For the cash-strapped Atari Corp., this infusion of money was very important and likely helped enable deals with Williams, Acclaim, and EA and other projects that were in the hopper in 1995. Unfortunately, Atari president and CEO Sam Tramiel later had a heart attack, which prompted his father Jack to take back the reins of the company.3 Jack felt it was safer to tie up with JTS, a manufacturer of hard drives — a "brown box commodity" that required little marketing — than to continue piddling away money on video games and the Jaguar, which sold so poorly.4 Atari entered a reverse merger with JTS on July 30, 1996.

3. Jack Tramiel was CEO of Atari Corp. until his son took over in 1988. Jack had been and would remain Chairman of the Board.

4. 125,000 units sold

Ultimately, no Sega games ever made it to the Jaguar, but Atari did show interest. Sega sent a list of games available for licensing and, as you'll see in the memos posted below, eventually did approve a few. There was some speculation in the press that Virtua Fighter and Daytona could turn up on the Jag, but these were apparently off the table. Instead, Atari received a catalog of 8- and 16-bit games that also didn't include Sonic or Ecco. The list also notes if royalties would be owed to or need to be negotiated with a third party, usually outside developers, many of which are covered on this site.